Digital Program Booklet "Die Vaterlosen"

“Die Vaterlosen” (“The Fatherless”) is set on the widow of a general’s estate that is on the verge of foreclosure. It is the start of the summer and a group of friends and neighbours gathers to celebrate the marriage of the widow’s stepson. Among their number is Platonov, the village school teacher with whom, as the action unfolds, not only the widow falls in love but also her stepson’s newlywed wife. The cynic Platonov, who is compared to both Don Juan and Hamlet in the play, is unable to cope with this situation and increasingly sees alcohol as his only escape. Then, suddenly, his treatment of women also starts to be held up for criticism… What begins as a happy garden party ends in a bloody mess.

This tragicomedy is one of Chekhov’s less-performed works. Written between 1878 and 1880, it is his debut play and by far his most extensive. Over a length of almost 200 pages, the teenage Chekhov unfolds a cast of characters that is as rich as in his later works and already deals with many of the themes that will come to define his oeuvre.

Anton Chekhov was born in 1860 in Taganrog, a port on the Sea of Azov not far from the Ukrainian border near Mariupol, and he grew up in the city. His father, a former serf, ran a modest grocery shop that went bankrupt in 1876. He had to do a midnight flit to Moscow in order to escape his creditors but he decided that Anton should stay behind to finish his schooling in Taganrog. Thus, Anton Chekhov spent the final years of his youth alone in the city and began writing during that time. Falling in love with the actress Maria Yermolova, he dedicated his first play to his first love. He sent the piece to the Maly Theatre in Moscow where it was rejected. Chekhov subsequently destroyed the manuscript and it was not until 1920 that a first draft of the play was discovered among his papers following his death, albeit missing a title page. Nowadays, the play is usually performed under the title of “Platonov”, although Chekhov noted in his diary that he wanted to call it “The Fatherless”. When he wrote the piece, he was essentially “fatherless” himself as well as being unhappily in love and a member of a family that was bankrupt. Three themes are established in the play that will run through all his subsequent works: intergenerational conflicts, economic decline and – of course (usually ill-fated) – love.

It is interesting to note that, during the time that he was writing the play, the region in which Chekhov grew up was dealing with the aftermath of a devastating defeat in the Crimean War (1853–1856). The following years witnessed the beginnings of a seismic modernisation of Russian society: of the military and the civil service accompanied by democratic reforms such as the freeing of the serfs. For a short period, Russia appeared to be liberalising. Against this backdrop, Chekhov shows us characters who are unable to cope with the upheavals of their era.

Is Platonov a positive character? This question is already being posed shortly before he makes his first appearance on stage. Chekhov’s answer is that Platonov is the perfect representative of disorientation – and therefore a modern hero. But is this really so? When we first meet Platonov, the main question we are probably asking ourselves is whether any of this can end well. He is an unpredictable phenomenon and therefore a provocation. Platonov represents a self-contradictory existence, a character who endures and lives subjective, mutually exclusive truths and different approaches to life. And in this, he fails. Platonov is most fascinating – and perhaps most irritating – during periods when moralising is being hotly debated in society and when this society is simultaneously submitting itself relentlessly to the mechanisms of the market.

Platonov also crosses boundaries. In Chekhov’s original version, an assault that is intended to be penalised with a trial and professional ban has no legal consequences. The affected character, Grekova, withdraws the accusation and reveals that her motivation has been spurned love. This is a narrative that is challenged in Jette Steckel’s production with an “interjection” by the Swiss playwright Katja Brunner which juxtaposes the 145-year-old text written by the then 18-year-old Chekhov with current developments, addresses the relationship between perpetrators and victims within a society and expands “The Fatherless” to include a female perspective.

Are the “fathers” role models? Or are they just distant echoes of a world that is now considered to be outdated? And whose “fathers” are they, anyway? The generations vacillate between accusations of lacking distinct characteristics, grounded in the fact that there is no real intergenerational conflict, and the desire for differentiation to sharpen their own profile. Which values does the next generation share with their “fathers” and “mothers”? What delineates their sense of being fatherlessness? Is it the discrediting of the past or the feeling of not being able to cope with the crisis-filled present created by the parental generation? How does anyone develop their own perspective on the world? Jette Steckel deploys a clever device to address such questions from Chekhov’s time in our own era: in the performance, the dramaturge Carl Hegemann – who was born in 1949 and who shares a connection with Steckel through their long-time collaboration – is switching sides to appear on stage as an actor who is essentially representing the “fathers’ generation”. This is a generation that still seems to know exactly how the world works – even if a lot of things might already have changed a long time ago or, at least, are now seen differently by the next generation. As a free radical, Hegemann will welcome a different guest live at each performance and chat with them about anything and everything. This is leading to the creation of the accompanying discussion series “Dad Men Talking”, excerpts of which are also being incorporated into the performances and which the audience can view later in the digital programme booklet.

Born in Berlin, Germany in 1982, Jette Steckel studied theatre directing from 2003 to 2007 at the Theaterakademie Hamburg and as a guest student at the Russian Institute of Theatre Arts (GITIS) in Moscow. In 2007, she was voted Young Director of the Year by Theater heute magazine for her production of Darja Stocker’s “Nachtblind” which was invited to numerous festivals. She won the Eysoldt Prize for Young Directors for her production of Edward Bond’s “Gerettet” (“Saved”) which was invited to the Radikal jung Festival in Munich. In 2008, she was nominated for the Austrian Nestroy Theatre Prize in the Best Newcomer category. From 2009 to 2013 and again since 2019, she has been in-house director at the Thalia Theater in Hamburg where her production of William Shakespeare’s “Die Tragödie von Romeo und Julia” (“The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet”) won the German “Der Faust” theatre award. Jette Steckel has also directed at the Schauspiel Köln and the Burgtheater in Vienna as well as opera. Since 2008, she has regularly directed productions at the Deutsches Theater Berlin. In the spring of 2017, she won the Rolf Mares Award with “Das achte Leben (Für Brilka)” (“The Eighth Life (For Brilka)”), her adaptation of the century-spanning epic novel by Nino Haratischvili. This is the first time Jette Steckel is directing in Munich.